Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Travel Bug

I've travelled a lot in my almost 30 years of life, I even went so far as to actually move to a few of the places I've been.
I've seen a lot of things, travelled a lot of roads, flown in 37 planes, and slept in a lot of rest station parking lots.
I've stood outside of a jiffy mart in the heart of Florida at the tender age of 14 asking random older men to buy me and my friends booze and cigarettes.

Thinking back on that now, I wonder who the hell those old guys thought they were? How I always wound up finding them and getting them to do my bidding and somehow avoid getting murdered.
Not all of my time spent travelling around as a young lady had a seedy underbelly though.
I also got to see some amazing shit.The Bayou's of Louisiana, real life mirages in the Nevada Desert, Northern California, Beautiful British Columbia; the list goes on and on. Sadly in those days, I only possessed throw away cameras, and we didn't feel the need to document ALL of the things.
I have a bunch of wonderful photos, and even more terrible photos from those days.
Perhaps one day I will digitize them and share them with the world.

I've been thinking about travelling a lot lately, for the last 5 years or so I purposefully didn't travel at all.
I had lived my formative years essentially on the road and I was so sick of moving around. Packing your stuff up after a few years or months can take a toll on a person.
Starting a new life or missing an old one isn't something someone should feel over and over again.
I had to settle down, I even yearned for it.

I got married bought a house and never looked back. I regretfully declined invitations to go away with friends.
I no longer stayed in touch with my far away friends. I didn't look at hotel deals or plane ticket steals online.
The thought of living out of a suitcase or packing up my flatiron annoyed me.
Trying to determine how the garbage would get out to the curb while I was away perplexed me.
It seemed unnecessary, the whole travel thing. Why bother really if you have it all and more in your little house? Well that can only go on for so long, sooner or later you are going to get bored.

The past few months have killed me, my soul is feeling as grey as the sky this winter...that sounds so emo but it's how I feel. I'm not depressed or anything like that. I'm just so bored. The monotony has finally gotten to me. There is something to be said for that feeling that comes over you when you are laying eyes on a new landscape for the very first time. Around here I can tell time by the sun for crying out loud, even the shadows are familiar.

I need a trip, I gotta go, I gotta get out of here.
Plane train or automobile
I'm not sure where or when, but soon.
I need to feel something new, something strange, something scary.
I need new places and faces.

If anything , maybe going out of town for a few days will remind me what I'm doing here in the first place.